The Center for Media and Information Literacy (CeMIL) operates within the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the publicly funded Freie Universität Berlin. CeMIL functions as a coordinating body for educational initiatives in media literacy, targeting schoolchildren, educators, and journalists. Its activities are carried out in partnership with mabb (Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg) and transnational academic consortia such as AREACORE (Arab-European Association for Media and Communication Researchers). With funds from the Federal Foreign Office, CeMIL, together with the Academy of the Ukrainian Press (AUP), has carried out the project “Teaching Media Literacy to Combat Disinformation” in Ukraine, aiming to protect local communities from the “destabilizing power of false information.” The precise date of CeMIL’s founding is not stated in official materials.
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Center for Media and Information Literacy (CeMIL)
Freie Universität Berlin
Germany's Federal Foreign Office (AA), State of Berlin (Germany)...See all
Germany's Federal Foreign Office (AA), State of Berlin (Germany) See less
"Teaching Media Literacy to Combat Disinformation" (Ukraine)
Media Authority Berlin-Brandenburg (mabb)...See all
Media Authority Berlin-Brandenburg (mabb) See less
Commentary:
CeMIL’s orientation reflects the shift in media literacy programs from liberal pedagogical projects to instruments of institutional stabilization. Its interventions – framed as civic education and professional training – emphasize the recovery of public trust in journalism and the containment of populist skepticism toward mainstream media. That teachers are cast as key agents in this process, and journalists as subjects in need of rehabilitated credibility, underscores the initiative’s remedial character. The center’s partnerships with legacy media outlets and regulatory agencies further consolidate its alignment with established institutions. CeMIL claims to promote analytical skill, though it evinces no public engagement with the political economy of mass media or the conditions now eroding public confidence in them. The analysis of media "content" remains safely within the bounds of form and representation, avoiding questions of ownership, agenda, ideology. In this, CeMIL follows a wider academic tendency to treat public disaffection as a technical failure rather than a specifically political development.
CeMIL’s orientation reflects the shift in media literacy programs from liberal pedagogical projects to instruments of institutional stabilization. Its interventions – framed as civic education and professional training – emphasize the recovery of public trust in journalism and the containment of populist skepticism toward mainstream media. That teachers are cast as key agents in this process, and journalists as subjects in need of rehabilitated credibility, underscores the initiative’s remedial character. The center’s partnerships with legacy media outlets and regulatory agencies further consolidate its alignment with established institutions. CeMIL claims to promote analytical skill, though it evinces no public engagement with the political economy of mass media or the conditions now eroding public confidence in them. The analysis of media "content" remains safely within the bounds of form and representation, avoiding questions of ownership, agenda, ideology. In this, CeMIL follows a wider academic tendency to treat public disaffection as a technical failure rather than a specifically political development.
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